FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2020

Volume 7, Number 12

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• These Are the Days of Decision
• Impeachment Trial Day One, Special Report
• General Flynn Withdraws Plea, Rolls the Dice on Justice
• Libya National Army’s Haftar To Attend Berline’s International Conference on Libya
• Egyptian Police Raid Turkey’s Anadolu Agency’s Illegal Office for Muslim Brotherhood Links
• HSBC Whistleblower Nicholas Wilson Opines on City of London Cancer
• EU Parliament Votes Up Resolution for Green New Deal, Blasted as a Replica of Juncker’s Failure
• Network Formed To Bring Fusion Power into Post-Fossil Fuel Energy Debate in Germany

EDITORIAL

These Are the Days of Decision

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—Far beyond the level at which most Americans are daring to think today, the deepest issues of history and the destiny of man are being fought out during these earliest days of 2020. Decisions are being made in these moments, whose implications will play out for centuries.  What is needed now are the men and women who can force themselves to comprehend this.

Thus, the call of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute for an urgent summit of the Presidents of the United States, Russia and China, in order to avoid the risk of war after the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was not merely a flash-in-the-pan idea conceived in answer to an immediate crisis. For lawful reasons understood and taught by Lyndon LaRouche for decades, it is precisely these three most-powerful sovereign nations—to be joined by India when that is possible—which have the unique ability to link arms, and by agreement between them to put an end to the era of imperialism and geopolitics. Zepp-LaRouche’s thought was echoed most clearly by Vladimir Putin in his state of the nation speech yesterday, when he said the five United Nations founding members—United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain—must eliminate the prerequisites for new global wars, and develop updated approaches to ensure stability on the planet, in full consideration of political, economic and military aspects of modern international relations.

On a related issue, we have reported that the London-centered adversary’s plans to deny President Donald Trump a second term—which, if successful, would probably result in near-term nuclear war—revolve around three projects.  First: a long, messy impeachment trial, even if acquittal is ultimately certain in the end.  Second: Trump will be defeated if he is made to repudiate his campaign promises and involve the U.S. in war. The third flank is negative publicity: Michael Bloomberg intends to spend $400 million in anti-Trump advertising in swing states, where he is also deploying forces on the ground. The goal is to find the weak points in Trump’s support and ultimately defeat him as part of this whole squeeze-play.

But underlying this whole nefarious effort is Trump’s one great vulnerability—precisely the one that is never mentioned. Begin with the fact that U.S. agriculture and industry were already in depression, even before the Depression of 2008 struck. And now, today, any cursory look past the transparently worthless official statistics, to the true physical-economic underlying conditions, shows that they have yet to recover even to their pre-2008 levels of misery.

President Trump’s Achilles’ heel is none of the things the media are pointing to.  It is the depression bequeathed to him by George Bush and Barack Obama.  As long as that depression persists, Trump is vulnerable (as the 2018 elections proved—if proof were needed).

It was this depression, his recognition of it, and his promise to overcome it, that brought President Trump to power. Once in office, he has made many economic improvements. He merits special praise as the only head of state to withdraw from the murderous COP21 Paris Agreement.  Yet for all he has been able to do, the depression persists.  It is still destroying the country; he still has not been able to lick it—not so surprising if you recall the gargantuan efforts required of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration to begin to roll back the Depression of those days—which was a far, far easier task than what we face today.

President Trump is well-aware of the problem; he knows perfectly well that stock market indices do not represent the real economy, and ridiculed his opponents for that delusion during the 2016 election cycle.  If more evidence were needed, look at the terms of the Phase One trade deal just signed with China.  It is predominantly a treaty to vastly expand U.S. industrial exports to China.  Of the $200 billion in increased U.S. goods and services China has committed to buy over the next two years, fully $80 billion are manufactured goods.  A Bloomberg wire claims the treaty will require a 56% increase in U.S. exports, which it implies is impossible.

The causes which have prevented President Trump from licking this depression have some kinship to the reasons he has been unable to withdraw U.S. troops from foreign wars as he has wanted to, or effectively fight the killer drug plague: corrupt officials, not just in the bureaucracy, but emphatically in the Congress as well.  But the brainwashing of academia, officialdom, and the media with lying doctrines of so-called economics is a still more powerful factor in this case.  Idolaters for whom empty catechisms like “free trade” overshadow any human, or even divine duty.

In these circumstances, there is no substitute for a mobilized, active and vociferous leading element among the Trump base, which understands and promulgates the proven solutions which Lyndon LaRouche developed for precisely this crisis—not for the 1930s or any other period, but for now.  He summarized them in his “Four New Laws” of June 8, 2014, which should be the beginning of a course of study for everyone who intends to help lead the country out of this crisis. (See EIR, June 13, 2014: “The Four New Laws To Save the U.S.A. Now! Not an Option: An Immediate Necessity.”)

To return finally to the considerations with which we began, this is no “merely American” question.  The United States’ role in the world is no less vital today than it was in the 1930s and World War II—indeed, we must now re-invigorate the World War II alliance in a new guise.  For that, we must rebuild our economy, prominently including missions to the Moon and Mars, and retake our sovereignty from the usurers of Wall Street and the City of London.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Impeachment Trial Day One, Special Report

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—Thursday, January 16th, was the first day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, or Donald John Trump, as the Democrats have repeatedly reminded us today, seeking to cast the President of the United States in the mode of the common criminal defendant.  Today’s official events largely consisted of the formalities of presentation of the two House articles of impeachment, and the swearing of the House managers, the Chief Justice John Roberts, and the swearing in of the “jurors,” namely, the Senators themselves.  The Democratic talking points were all about being solemn and realizing that the weight of history “was on your shoulders,” and the moment was “profound.” These points were repeated so many times today that those saying them were visibly bent and sour-faced by the end of the day, profundity having escaped them completely.

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi invented a special ritual to emphasize just how solemn and prayerful this all was, funeral marching, with her seven floor managers, a silver tray with the articles of impeachment on it, over to the Senate—a televised show of gravity and, presumably, the continued ability to walk. A few hours later the actual gold-embossed pens she used to sign the articles and gave away as souvenirs were being solemnly hawked on eBay.

Today, besides getting bent by solemnity and history, actual Democratic Senators were manically and gleefully flogging their latest fake talking points concerning new alleged Russian hacks, the compelling honesty of huckster Lev Parnas, and claims that Rudy Giuliani somehow arranged for the stalking of former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in Ukraine—pure salacious tabloid fare for the labile and credulous. This was to buttress the demand that John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney and other White House officials must be called as witnesses lest the Senate be accused of a White House coverup for a man who has declared himself the monarch, the King.  (Yes, folks, they are really saying that.) Finally, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) rolled out an opinion that the President violated the law when the President placed his short hold on lethal aid to Ukraine.  This seemed to be the final bombshell of this day.

The substantive trial begins on Tuesday, Jan. 21, although we can expect another round of bombshell fakery before that.

Here’s what this news service is watching and what we have to say about the “bombshells” delivered to date:

(1). To Be Kept Constantly in Mind:  The whole shebang is a complete fraud on the American people. President Trump was correct to withhold lethal aid from Ukraine and he should never have approved it.  The absolutely fake claim being foisted on you is that Ukrainian freedom fighters need this aid to “fight the Russians” who have invaded them. Just like the fact that a Russian hack is not responsible for WikiLeaks exposing Hillary Clinton’s rank sabotage of the Sanders campaign, debate cheating, and abject Wall Street servitude in 2016, the Russian military was not and is not on the ground in the Donbas or elsewhere in Eastern Ukraine.  This fact, well known in Ukraine itself, but contradicted by a flagrant propaganda campaign conducted by NATO, the British Foreign Office, British military’s Integrity Initiative, and the U.S. State Department, was confirmed yet again in December in an official report by a German Bundestag research unit.

(2). Further, many of the Ukrainian “freedom fighters” are outright neo-Nazis, such as the Azov Battalion, and related terrorist groups.  Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden, and Victoria Nuland put them into power in 2014 in a geopolitical color revolution and coup, to make Ukraine a vassal state for terrorists determined to march through Russia’s border. MI6’s Christopher Steele and all the British intelligence operatives involved in attempting to defeat and eliminate Donald Trump were also involved in the Ukraine coup.  The fact that the coup empowered neo-Nazis, the “freedom fighters” Congress insists on funding, is so well known that Congress has passed fruitless resolutions about not letting the arms we are providing fall into the hands of neo-Nazis. Meanwhile, NATO and the British train the very same neo-Nazis in Ukraine itself. Raytheon sold Ukraine Javelin anti-tank missiles through the new deals approved by the President, a sale championed by our hyperactive Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, who, in his former life was Raytheon’s chief lobbyist. Problem? There is no tank warfare in Ukraine.

(3). The first “new narrative” bombshell drop by the information warriors seeking to poison and/or fry your mind occurred on Monday, Jan. 13th, in the New York Times. It claimed that the Russians hacked the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where Hunter Biden made millions because of his name. There is a necessity in the play produced by the Democrats to never admit that any part of the fake narrative about Trump has been wrong, a strategic necessity to drive a wedge between Trump and Putin who, together, just might achieve peace in such neighborhoods as the Middle East. Who is claiming this new hack by the Russians?  Well, a company called Area 1 Security out of California, run by Oleg Falkowitz and Blake Darché. Falkowitz is an Obama intelligence community veteran, serving at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA, and Darché is a veteran of—wait for it—CrowdStrike, the people who concocted the “Russia hacked the DNC and Podesta” narrative.  To make sure we get the parallel, Area 1 Security assures us that the Russian hackers are from Russian military intelligence, the GRU, the same outfit indicted by Robert Mueller for allegedly hacking the DNC and John Podesta and revealing truthful facts about Hillary Clinton.  According to the New York Times and Area 1, the GRU hackers were using the code name “Fancy Bear.” Fancy Bear, however, is a piece of malware owned by the Ukrainian hacking group Anonymous or Shaltai Boltai (Humpty Dumpty), notorious for working in operations against the Russian state and suspected of similar operations on behalf of Hillary Clinton in 2016.

General Flynn Withdraws Plea, Rolls the Dice on Justice

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—In a filing in Washington D.C.’s U.S. District Court on Jan. 14, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn withdrew his guilty plea and sought an adjournment of further proceedings. Sentencing had been set before Judge Emmett Sullivan on Jan. 28. Flynn had been President Donald Trump’s first National Security Adviser, and was earlier director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, until he was fired by Obama in 2014 for being a major obstacle to the kinds of illegal programs the Obama Administration had been running since the beginning.

Flynn’s counsel, Sidney Powell, states that the United States breached Flynn’s November 2017 plea agreement, when it renounced its sentencing recommendation of no jail time, and recommended a jail sentence for Flynn in its Jan. 7th Sentencing Memorandum. The Justice Department claimed that Flynn failed to cooperate in the related prosecution of Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian and obstructed that case. The DOJ lawyers also hammered Flynn’s lawyer Powell, claiming that she had foisted unfounded conspiracy theories on the public and the court, and that her declarations of Flynn’s innocence directly undermined Flynn’s previous acceptance of responsibility for his crimes.

While Rafiekian was convicted by a jury in the Eastern District of Virginia for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and related lobbying and false statement provisions, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga threw out the Rafiekian case because of insufficient evidence, post-trial. According to Powell’s brief, prosecutors had demanded that Flynn lie in the Rafiekian case in order to support their otherwise untenable prosecutorial theory. Mid-trial, prosecutors suddenly decided not to call Flynn as a witness against his former business partner, and claimed, out of the blue, that Flynn was a co-conspirator.

This stunning mid-trial reversal in the Virginia trial was squarely aimed at further inflaming Judge Sullivan. Sullivan had previously called Flynn a traitor, in an unhinged rant at Flynn’s initial sentencing hearing in his court, and postponed sentencing, making it dependent on Flynn’s further cooperation in the Rafiekian case. That also shocked Judge Trenga, the trial judge in the Rafiekian case, with many attributing Trenga’s dismissal of the Rafiekian case to his perception of the government’s ugly and vindictive conduct with respect to Flynn.

Attorney Powell, in her brief, argues that the Justice Department team has engaged in a vindictive and retaliatory course of action ever since she began representing Flynn and exposing the illegalities involved in the frameup of General Flynn, begun in the Obama Administration, continued by the legal assassins on Robert Mueller’s team, and continued, to date, by Mueller’s still extant team of prosecutors. Judge Sullivan dismissed Flynn’s claims of government misconduct in a 92-page decision on Dec. 16th, even going so far as to accuse Powell of plagiarism.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Libya National Army’s Haftar To Attend Berlin’s International Conference on Libya

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—Three days before the Jan. 19 international conference on Libya in Berlin, Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas will fly to Benghazi, to meet with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, with the idea to convince him to sign the ceasefire agreement worked out Jan. 13 in Moscow, before or during conference. “Our message is clear: This war cannot be won by any party with military means,” Maas said before his departure. “It may be hoped that the conflicting parties would take this opportunity to put the future of Libya back into Libyan hands…. A window is opening now to liberate this conflict from foreign influences.”

Following Maas’s visit to Benghazi today, Haftar has said he will respect the ceasefire and attend the Berlin conference on Jan. 19, even if he has not signed the Moscow ceasefire agreement. Yesterday, in Cairo, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who backs Haftar. After their meeting, Conte said that Italy is ready to send peacekeeping troops if the Berlin conference succeeds in creating the “preconditions.”

The High Committee of the African Union for Libya, chaired by Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso, will also meet on Jan. 25 in Brazzaville. Republic of Congo is among the nations invited to attend the Berlin conference for that reason; other nations invited are United States, Russia, China, France, U.K., Italy, Germany, Turkey, U.A.E., Egypt, and Algeria, as well as the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, and Arab League.

However, muddying the effort to get foreign forces out of Libya, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared that Ankara “is sending” troops to Tripoli to back the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. According to Britain’s Guardian, Turkey has assembled 2,000 militia, some of which have already been sent to Libya, from the rebel “Syrian National Army” and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist swamp. “All the Syrians are already fighting in Tripoli. They were seen and spoken to on the Salahuddin front [a district in Tripoli], a few kilometers from the center,” a Western source who is on the Libyan frontline told the Italian daily Il Giornale today.

Egyptian Police Raid Turkey’s Anadolu Agency’s Illegal Office for Muslim Brotherhood Links

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—The security forces of Egypt raided the offices of Turkey’s official Anadolu News Agency, and arrested four of its staff for its links to the Muslim Brotherhood. The raid took place overnight on Jan. 14-15, and was approved by the Higher State Security Prosecution.

“Egyptian national security sector had observed one of Turkey’s electronic media committees that took an apartment in Cairo as a hideout for its opposing activity,” according to a statement issued by Egypt’s Interior Ministry on Jan. 15, reported Egypt’s major and oldest newspaper, Al Ahram.

Anadolu’s legal office had been shut down in 2013, following the ouster of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, then-President Mohamed Morsi, who had the support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The news agency has been operating illegally in Egypt ever since then. The agency had been in operation under the established by the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group with the backing of Turkey, according to the ministry: “It was preparing false and fabricated reports on the political, economy, security, and human rights conditions in Egypt and sending it back the agency’s headquarters in Turkey.”

Ankara was not pleased, issuing a denunciation, and calling in the Egyptian chargé d’affaires to submit a protest. The Turkish Foreign Ministry statement termed the raid an “act of violence” and sought for Western countries to denounce it. It did not mention that Anadolu’s Cairo office had been closed down seven years ago, and was operating illegally in Egypt.

In response, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez declared that Egypt rejected Turkey’s statements and repeated Cairo’s reasons for the arrests. He further said that Turkey under President Erdogan is “one of the worst” violators of press freedom, freedom of expression and opinion, and other fundamental rights. He pointed out that in 2019, Turkey ranked 157 out of 180 in imprisonment of journalists on the Freedom of the Press Index, and that Ankara had revoked the licenses of nearly 682 journalists between November 2018 and March 2019.

Cairo’s Foreign Ministry statement accused the Turkish government of “funding extremist groups and terrorist militias in a number of countries in the region, seeking to control their fates,” according Al Ahram.

Today, the prosecutor general released the two Turkish citizens in order to hand them over to the Turkish embassy in Cairo; and has also ordered the release on bail of three Egyptians, reported Al Ahram.

ECONOMY

HSBC Whistleblower Nicholas Wilson Opines on City of London Cancer

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—Hongkong and Shanghai Bank whistleblower Nicholas Wilson, talking to Sputnik about the effect of the Brexit on the City of London financial center, said that drug money is what had kept the financial system alive during the 2008 crisis. He said: “Nothing can be done to clean up the City of London. If any politician tried to dismantle the City of London the world economy would collapse. Drugs money was the only thing that kept the banks going during the 2008 financial crisis.”

(Well, it was also the Federal Reserve bailout, but it does not hurt that Sputnik blazens the headline: “ ‘World Economy Would Collapse’ If City of London Stopped Laundering Money, Says HSBC Whistleblower.”)

Wilson warned against the designated successor to Mark Carney as governor of the Bank of England, current Financial Conduct Authority Chief Executive Andrew Bailey, saying he has closed both eyes to all laundering and corruption scandals involving the City of London.  Said Wilson: “The EU wanted to tighten up on money laundering and the U.K. was the only country who voted against it. … Capitalism relies on a swash of dirty money which is moved around and supports investment around the world.” A fact first exposed by EIR’s 1978 book Dope, Inc. Britain’s Opium War against the U.S., when the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank was still the “central bank” of British Crown Colony, Hong Kong.

EU Parliament Votes Up Resolution for Green New Deal, Blasted as a Replica of Juncker’s Failure

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—The European Parliament approved a resolution by 494-147 for a “Conference on the Future of Europe” in support of Ursula von der Leyen’s Green New Deal.

In explaining the “no” vote of his Identity and Democracy Group (ID), chairman Marco Zanni (Italy, Lega) said the Green New Deal is ideological. “It is not based on concrete facts, but it is too ideological,” Zanni said, calling it “a marketing operation.” It is a replica of a failure, namely the plan of former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Zanni said.

Zanni, the foreign policy spokesman of Italy’s Lega party, gave an exclusive interview to LaRouche PAC, in which he exposes the EU’s Green New Deal as a new financial bubble, and which therefore requires separation of the deposit banks from the speculative, private banks.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Network Formed To Bring Fusion Power into Post-Fossil Fuel Energy Debate in Germany

Jan. 16 (EIRNS)—A new “liberal-conservative” circle has been formed at the initiative of several Bundestag members from the Christian Democracy (CDU/CSU) and Free Democratic Party (FDP), which among other ideas, announced its intent to campaign for increased input into the development of thermonuclear fusion power in order to ensure that fusion is not left out, since it is otherwise not referenced in any of ongoing official discussions about Germany’s planned final exit from nuclear power (2022) and coal power (2038), and what is to come afterwards.

The meetings today in Berlin on the timetable for the coal exit between the German federal and state governments have only so-called renewables on their agenda. The initiative to include fusion power is indicative of a growing ferment in Germany, not to mention uneasiness, about the government’s policy and of the impulse to bring to the public serious concepts for a secure future energy supply.

Fusion power, which can use isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, as fuel, produces so much energy that it’s too costly to charge customers for it.  Process head from fusion is used in a “fusion torch,” to reduce waste to its constituent elements, making mining a thing of the past.

Fusion power that uses helium-3 as fuel, can provide electricity directly, without relying on a turbine.  That power could be used as a propellant in spacecraft, allowing high-speed travel to, say Mars, in weeks, rather than the dangerous longer-term journeys.

Reach us at eirdailyalert@larouchepub.com or call 1-571-293-0935